by Wilbur Smith
"To say nothing of the Virgin Mary,'Nicholas smiled.
"You are a horrid old cynic," she sighed. "And what is more, you
probably snore."
"You are about to find out the hard way," he told her, but she was
asleep before him. Her breathing was gentle and even, and he could just
hear it above the sound of the water. It was a long time since he had
had a lovely woman lying at his side. When he was sure she was deeply
under, he reached across and touched her cheek gently.
"Pleasant dreams, little one," he whispered tenderly.
"You have had a busy day." That was the way he had often bid his younger
daughter sleep.
The muleteers were stirring long before the dawn, and the whole party
was on the path, way again as soon as the light was strong enough to
reveal their footing. When the early sun struck the upper walls of the
cliff face, they were still high enough above the valley floor to have
an aerial view of the terrain.
Nicholas drew Royan aside and they let the rest of the caravan go on
down ahead of them.
He found a place to sit and unrolled the satellite photograph between
them. Picking out the major peaks and features of the scene, they
orientated themselves and began to make some order out of the
cataclysmic landscape that rioted below them.
"We can't see the Abbay river from here," Nicholas pointed out. "It's
still deep in the sub-gorge. We will probably only get our first glimpse
of it from almost directly above."
"If we have identified our present position accurately, then the river
will make two ox'bow bends around that bluff over there."
"Yes, and the confluence of the Dandera river with the Abbay is over
there, below those cliffs." He used his thumb knuckle as a rough scale
measure. "About fifteen miles from here."
"It looks as though the Dandera has changed its course many times over
the centuries.-I can see at least two gullies that look like ancient
river beds." She pointed down: "Mere, and there. They are all choked
with jungle now." She looked crestfallen, "Oh, Nicholas, it is such a
huge and confused area. How are we ever going to find the single
entrance to a tomb hidden in all that?"
"Tomb? What tomb is this?" Boris demanded with interest. He had come
back up the trail to find them. They had not heard his approach, and now
he stood over them.
"What tomb are you talking about?, "Why, the tomb of St. Frumentius, of
course," Nicholas told him smoothly, showing no concern at having been
overheard.
"Isn't the monastery dedicated to the saint?" Royan asked as smoothly,
as she rolled up the photograph.
"Da." He nodded, looking disappointed, as though he expected something
of more interest. "Yes, St. Frumentius.
But they will not let you visit the tomb. They will not let you into the
inner part of the monastery. Only the priests are allowed in there."
He removed his cap and scratched the short, stiff bristles that covered
his scalp. They rasped like wire under his fingernails. "This week is
the ceremony of Timkat, the Blessing of the Tabot. There will be a great
deal of excitement down there. You will find it very interesting, but
you will not be able to enter the Holy of Holies, nor will you be able
to see the actual tomb. I have never met any white man who has seen it."
He squinted up at the sun. "We must get on. It looks close, but it will
take us two more days to reach the Abbay.
It is bad ground down there. A long march, even for a famous dik-dik
hunter." He laughed delightedly at his own joke, and turned away down
the path.
As they approached the bottom of the cliff, the gradient of the trail
smoothed out and the steps became shallower and further apart. The going
became easier and their progress swifter, but the air had changed in
quality and taste. It was no longer cool, bracing mountain air but the
languid, enervating air of the equator, with the smell and taste of the
encroaching jungle.
"Hod' said Royan, shrugging out of the woollen shawl.
"Ten degrees hotter, at least," Nicholas agreed. He pulled his old army
jersey over his head, leaving.his hair in curly disarray. "And we can
expect it to get hotter before we reach the Abbay. We still have to
descend another three thousand feet."
Now the path followed the Dandera river for a while.
Sometimes they were several hundred feet above it, and shortly
afterwards they splashed waist-deep through a ford, hanging on to the
panniers of the mules to keep themselves from being swept away on the
flood.
Then the gorge of the Dandera river was too deep and steep to follow any
longer, as sheer cliffs dropped into dark pools. So they left the river
and followed the track that squirmed like a dying snake amongst eroded
hills and tall red stone bluffs.
A mile or two further downstream they rejoined the river in a different
mood as it rippled through dense forest.
The dangling lianas swept the surface and tree moss brushed their heads
as they passed, straggling and unkempt as the beard of the old priest at
Debra Maryam. Vervet monkeys chattered at them from the treetops and
ducked their heads in wide-eyed outrage at the human intrusion into
these secret places. Once a large animal crashed away through the
undergrowth, and Nicholas glanced across at Boris.
The Russian shook his head, laughing. "No, English, not dik-dik. Only
kudu."
On the hillside above them the kudu paused to look back. He was a large
bull with full twists to his wide corkscrew horns, a magnificent beast
with a maned dewlap and pricked ears shaped like trumpets. He stared at
them with huge, startled eyes. Boris whistled softly and his attitude
changed abruptly.
"Those horns are over fifty inches. They would get a place right at the
top of Rowland Ward." He was referring to the register of big game which
was the Bible of the trophy hunter. "Don't you want to take him,
English?" He ran to the nearest mule and pulled the Rigby rifle from its
slip case, then ran back and offered it to Nicholas.
"Let him go." Nicholas shook his head. "Only dik-dik for me."
With a flirt of his white powder-puff tail, the bull was gone over the
ridge. Boris shook his head disgustedly and spat into the river.
"Why did he try to insist that you kill it?" Royan demanded as they went
on.
"A photograph of a record pair of horns like that would look good on his
advertising brochure. Suck in them clients."
All day they followed the winding trail, and in the late afternoon they
camped in a clearing above the river where it was evident that other
caravans had camped many times before them. It seemed obvious that this
road was divided into time-honoured stages: every traveller took three
full days from the top of the falls to reach the monastery, and they all
camped at the same sites.
"Sorry. No shower here," Boris told his clients. "If you want to wash,
there is a safe pool around the first bend upstream."
R
oyan looked appealingly at Nicholas, "I am so tired and sweaty. Please
won't you stand guard for me, where you can hear me call if I need you?"
So he lay on the mossy bank just below the bend, out of sight but close
enough to hear her splash and squeal at the cold embrace of the water.
Once when he turned his head he realized that the current must have
drifted her downstream, for through the trees he caught a flash of a
naked back, and the curve of a buttock, creamy and glistening wet with
water. He looked away again guiltily, but he was startled by the
intensity of his physical arousal brought on by that brief glimpse of
lambent skin dappled with the late sunlight through the trees.
When she came downstream along the bank, singing softly, towelling her
wet hair, she called to him, "Your turn.
Do you want me to stand guard for you?"
"I am a big boy now." He shook his head, but as she passed him he
noticed the saucy glint in her eye, and he ly if she had been fully
aware of just how wondered sudden far downstream she had swum, and how
much he had seen.
He was titillated by the thought.
He went upstream to the pool alone, and as he stripped he looked down at
himself and felt guilty when he saw how she had moved him- Since
Rosalind, no other woman had had this effect on him.
"A nice cold plunge won't do you any harm, my lad." He threw his jeans
over a bush, and dived into the pool.
sat at the campfire after the evening meal, olas looked up suddenly and
cocked his
"Am I hearing things?" he wondered.
"No," Tessay laughed. "That is singing you hear. The priests from the
monastery are coming to welcome us."
They saw the torches then, winding up the hillside in procession,
flickering through the trees as they approached the camp. The muleteers
and the servants crowded forward, singing and clapping rhythmically to
greet the deputation from the monastery.
The deep male voices soared and then dropped away, almost to a whisper,
then rose again in descant, haunting and beautiful, the sound of Africa
in the night. It drove icy thrills down Nicholas's spine, so that he
shivered involuntarily.
Then they saw the white robes of the priests, flitting like moths in the
torchlight as they wound along the trail The camp servants fell on their
knees as the first of the holy men entered the perimeter of the camp.
They were young acolytes, bare-headed and barefooted. They were followed
by the monks, wearing long robes and tall turbans.
Their ranks wheeled aside and opened up, an honour guard for the phalanx
of deacons and fully ordained priests in their gaudy embroidered robes
and vestments.
Each of them carried a heavy Coptic cross, set on a tall staff and
intricately chased and worked innative silver.
They in turn opened into two ranks, still chanting, and allowed the
canopied palanquin to be carried forward by four hefty young acolytes
and placed in the centre of the camp. The crimson and yellow silk
curtains shimmered in the light of the camp lanterns and the torches of
the procession.
"We must go forward to welcome the abbot," Boris told Nicholas in a
stage whisper. "His name is Jali Hora." As they stepped up to the
litter, the curtains were drawn dramatically aside and a tall figure
stepped down to earth.
Both Tessay and Royan sank to their knees respectfully, and clasped
their hands at the breast. However, Nicholas and Boris remained on their
feet, and Nicholas inspected the abbot with interest.
jali Hora was skeletally thin. Beneath the skirts of his robe his legs
were like sticks of cured tobacco, tar'black and twisted, with
desiccated sinew and stringy muscle. His robe was green and gold, worked
with gold thread that glittered in the firelight. On his head he wore a
tall hat with a flat top embroidered with a pattern of crosses and
stars.
The abbot's face -was dead sooty black, the skin wrinkled and riven with
the deep etchings of age. There were few teeth behind his puckered lips,
and even those were yellowed and askew. His beard was startling silver
white, breaking like storm surf on the old bones of his jaw.
One eye was opaque blue and blinded with tropical ophthalmia, but the
other eye glistened like that of a hunting leopard.
He began to speak in a high, quavering voice. "A blessing," Boris warned
Nicholas, and they both bowed their heads respectfully. The assembled
priests came in with the chanted response each time the old man paused.
When at last he had finished giving his blessing jali Hora made the sign
of the cross in four directions, rotating slowly towards each point of
the compass, while two altar boys swung their silver censers vigorously,
deluging the night with pungent clouds of incense smoke.
After the blessing the two women came forward to kneel before the abbot.
He stooped over them and struck them lightly on each cheek with his
silver cross, chanting a falsetto blessing over them.
"They say the old man is over a hundred years old," Boris whispered to
Nicholas.
Two white-robed debteras brought forward a stool of African ebony, so
beautifully carved that Nicholas eyed it acquisitively. He guessed that
it was probably centuries old, and would have made a handsome addition
to the museum collection. The two debteras took Jah Hora's elbows and
gently seated him on the stool. Then the rest of the company sank to the
earth in a congregation around him, their black faces lifted towards him
attentively.
Tessay sat at his feet, and when her husband spoke she translated
quietly for him into Amharic. "It is a great pleasure and an honour for
me to greet you again, Holy Father."
The old man nodded, and Boris went on, "I have brought an English
nobleman of royal blood to, visit the monastery of St. Frumentius."
"I say, steady on, old boy!, Nicholas protested, but all the
congregation studied him with expectant interest.
"What do I do now?" he asked Boris out of the corner of his mouth.
"What do You think he came all this way for?" Boris grinned maliciously.
"He wants a gift. Money,'
"Maria Theresa dollars?" he enquired, referring to the centuries-old
traditional currency of Ethiopia, "Not necessarily. Times have changed.
jali Hora will be happy to take Yankee green-backs."
"How much?"
"You are a nobleman of royal blood. You will be hunting in his valley.
Five hundred dollars at least."
Nicholas winced and went to fetch his bag from one of the mule panniers.
When he came back he bowed to the abbot and placed the sheaf of currency
in his outstretched, pink-palmed claw. The abbot smiled, exposing the
yellow stumps of his teeth, and spoke briefly.
Tessay translated for him, "He says, "Welcome to the monastery of St.
Frumentius and the season of Timkat." He wishes you good hunting on the
banks of the Abbay river."
Immediately the solemn mood of the devout company changed. They broke
out in smiles and laughter, and the abbot looked expect
antly at Boris.
"The holy abbot says it has been a thirsty journey," Tessay translated.
"The old devil loves his brandy," Boris explained, and shouted to the
camp butler. With some ceremony a bottle of brandy was brought and
placed on the camp table in front of the abbot, shoulder to shoulder
with the bottle of vodka in front of Boris. They toasted each other, and
the abbot tossed back a dram that made his good eye weep with tears, and
his voice husky as he directed a question at Royan.
"He asks you, Woizero Royan, where do you come from, daughter, that you
follow the true path of Christ the Saviour of man?"
"I am an Egyptian, of the old religion," Royan replied.
The abbot and all his priests nodded and beamed with approval.
"We are all brothers and sisters in Christ, the Egyptians and the
Ethiopians," the abbot told her. "Even the word Coptic derives from the
Greek for Egyptian. For over sixteen hundred years the Abuna, the
bishop, of Ethiopia was always appointed by the Patriarch in Cairo. Only
the Emperor Haile Selassie changed that in 1959, but we still follow the
true road to Christ. You are welcome, my daughter."
His debtera poured another dram of brandy and the old man swallowed it
at a gulp. Even Boris looked impressed, "Where does the skinny old black
tortoise put it?" he wondered aloud. Tessay did not translate, but she
lowered her eyes and the hurt she felt for the insult to the holy man
showed on her madonna features.
Jah Hora turned to Nicholas. "He wants to know what animals you have
come to hunt here in his valley," Tessay told him.
Nicholas steeled himself and then replied carefully.
There was a long moment of disbelief, then the abbot cackled happily and
the assembled priests shouted with incredulous mirth.
"A dik-dik! You have come to hunt a dikdik! But there is no meat on an
animal that size."
Nicholas let them get over the first shock, and then produced a
photograph of the mounted specimen of Moquoda harPerU from the museum.
He placed it on the table in front of Jah Hora.
"This is no ordinary dik-dik. It is a holy dik-dik," he told them in
portentous tones, nodding at Tessay for the translation. "Let me recount
the legend." They were silenced by the prospect of a good story with
religious overtones. Even the abbot arrested the glass on its way to his
lips and replaced it on the table. His one eye swivelled from the